Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Ice Cream and Teeth

Well, summer appears to be taking its time to come to Texas this year. It has been rather pleasant outside for the past several weeks. We decided to go out for ice cream after dinner one day. Hudson excitedly chose the green ice cream in a code. He did well, until he decided he wanted to bite a hole in the side of his cone. I, of course, went with the tried and true vanilla.
 Sara Beth and Heather carefully at their ice cream with much less mess. Sara Beth has begun the process of loosing her baby teeth. The lower right front tooth has progressively gotten more and more loose over the past couple weeks. She has had to chew her food with more and more care as the tooth becomes less and less attached. This past week she made the comment that she can make her tooth act like a draw bridge.
Hudson has been able to say the word "no" for quite a while, and will yell it quite forcefully if prompted, but for the longest time, if he agreed with a question, he would just nod his head. Now, when you ask him a question, he will say "Ummmm, yeah."

A couple Sundays ago, we sat down for our regular popcorn, cheese and fruit. Hudson went over to the strawberries and took a bite out of each one and put them back in the bowl after he had marked it for later consumption.
Heather and I have been working hard (with the assistance from my Dad) to get our yard into a more cultured state. Last year the grass was still choked out by all the weeds. This year, we have, mostly, got the weeds under control, and so I moved on to begin pulling out all the wild grass so that only the bermuda grass is in the yard. Sara Beth and Hudson got into the spirit too and began pulling out large handfulls of grass and raking them into piles to put in their green bucker. Hudson kept trying to mess up Sara Beth's raked pile though.
My parents have a garden in their backyard that is rather picturesque this time of year. Instead of going out into a random field in Woodbridge to get the standard bluebell pictures, we can take the photo in their backyard
For Easter, Heather's aunt, uncle, and cousins came over to our house for a big lunch. We did an easter egg hunt for them. I placed Hudson's eggs out in the open and Sara Beth's were hidden a little more. She had to go back and forth several times before she found all the pink eggs I had hidden in the flower bed. The kids are finally old enough that we could sit on the front porch and talk while watching them play in the front yard without having to break conversation every few minutes to pull the kids out of the street. Dare I say it? Parenting is becoming a little easier.

Monday, April 14, 2014

Camping adventures

On March 28th, we began a successful camping trip. By successful, I mean that no one got any serious head injuries and we were prepared for the sub-40s temperatures.

I took the afternoon off from work Friday to come home early so we could finish packing and head out early. We went to Lake Ray Roberts State Park this time. On the way, we stopped by Collin College so Heather could ask about their nursing program. While there, Sara Beth, Hudson, and I wandered around the campus. The kids found a stream where they could throw rocks in and started the camping trip off right by getting their feet all muddy.
When we got out to the camp site, the kids were eager to start digging into the soft drinks. They were ecstatic to discover that Heather and I were a little more generous when it came to how much they got. Hudson probably went through 6 bottles over the course of 2 days.
This time, there were no surprises with the tent. It setup in just a few minutes and didn't rip apart once it was all erected.
Heather and I worried less about Hudson tripping and falling into the fire this time, but we still had to stop him from running too close to it. We encouraged the kids to go wander and play further away from the fire. There was a playground about 50 yards from our tent, and we let the kids play over there.
The highlight of the camping trip for some are the S-Mores.
Some kids make more of a mess while eating the S-Mores than others.
On Saturday, we went hiking on a horse trail. We saw frogs, horses, and tree stumps that appear to have been chewed by beavers. Heather found the remnants of a beaver lodge too.  
It did get a little cold at night, but we were prepared with double fleece pajamas for the kids. Sara Beth decided to sleep under her air mattress instead of on top of it. The only complaint we had was that some of our fellow campers continued to be rather loud past 10pm.
Once we got home, it was time to get everyone washed up and ready for another week of school.